New Mexican meals make much use of corn, which is served in a variety of ways-baked as tortillas, served fresh as corn on the cob, blended into soups and sauces, and mixed into salads or with other vegetables, especially red and green peppers. Native blue corn is quite surprising when it is served as blue corn bread, chips, or tortillas. In the markets of New Mexico, you can still find chicos, or sun-dried grains of roasted sweet corn. Chicos last a long time, but when soaked and boiled, they taste almost like corn. Many recipes also contain pinon, or pine nuts, the small sweet seeds of the southwestern pine tree, once a staple food in the Pueblo diet.
A Spanish influence can be found in the sweet, anise-flavored cookies sold in New Mexico bakeries. They are prepared much as they were made in the kitchens of seventeenth-century Spain for the Christmas feast.